1 Professor Barnie Choudhury—Written Evidence (FOJ0110)
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Professor Barnie Choudhury—written evidence (FOJ0110) House of Lords Select Committee on Communications and Digital inquiry “Future of Journalism” – a BAME perspective Section 1: About Barnie Choudhury 1. My name is Barnie Choudhury and I am a professor of professional practice in communications at the University of Buckingham. This means the University has recognised my contribution to journalism, media, PR, communication and marketing over the past 40 years, rather than confer upon me the title based on academic work. 2. My life in summary is this. Born in Bangladesh but of Indian citizenship. Arrived in the UK in 1969. Father worked in a factory. UK citizen in 1983. Brought up as working class and went to a “bog standard comprehensive” which, in my year alone, produced a Hollywood A-star actor and a commander in the UK navy. Hospital radio at 16; commercial radio at 17; the first in my family to go to higher education through clearing; graduated with a 2:1 in combined sciences (chemistry with chemical engineering and fuel technology); turned down a place at Sandhurst in favour of a BBC reporter traineeship in 1986 – one of four BAMEs that year, two of whom left days after the scheme ended because of racism; climbed through the ranks facing structural, systemic and institutional racism; started my academic career in 1999; left the BBC as an award-winning network news correspondent in 2010; joined academia fulltime alongside a global consultancy business; headhunted to join the University of East London as director of communications in 2014; asked to apply for and joined the Commonwealth secretariat as director of media and PR for Baroness Patricia Scotland; cutback on PR commitments in 2019 to work as a freelance consultant; currently working with various clients on crisis management; and contributing editor for Eastern Eye, the UK’s number one Asian newspaper. 3. As part of a series of articles during the pandemic, Eastern Eye was mentioned for its work in parliament by MPs during a debate on the government’s handling of COVID three times. We did our job by holding power to account, and it shows the importance of specialist BAME publications, on which I will expand later in this submission. 4. Most importantly in this submission, I competed, took part in, and completed two different BBC failed diversity schemes intended to recognise “highflyers and potential senior leaders”. I had to leave the BBC to gain my leadership experience from others who recognised that I had the potential, skill, and determination to lead people effectively. I write from a perspective as someone who has been a journalist, recruiter, academic and senior leader with his hand on the levers of power. Section 2: The arguments for racial diversity and inclusion 5. We must acknowledge that things have improved for black, Asian, minority ethnic people in journalism since I joined the profession 40 years ago. That is my submission’s starting point. But the question remains, after two generations, why are we still having to have a national conversation which asks about diversity, equality and inclusion in journalism? 1 6. For years we have been speaking about the “business case” for racial diversity. How every industry and profession make more money, hence business, from having “a diversity of creative minds”. While that is absolutely true, if this pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement have shown one thing, it is that this is an argument which everyone with the levers of power acknowledges to be axiomatic, yet true progress has been far too slow. 7. Instead I am suggesting we look at it from another perspective. Would we be making the case for white people? Do we ever ask white journalists to justify their existence or expect them to prove themselves continually and hold themselves to a higher standard? In short: why do we have to continually justify the need for diversity? Should it not be accepted practice? 8. Structural, systemic and institutional racism exist in journalism. We can prove this by one simple exercise and one simple analogy. If we take a group of white and non-white journalists with the same potential, same qualifications, same opportunities and monitor their progress over a 10 to 12 year period, we will see that inevitably, the white cohort will progress faster and further than their non- white colleagues. I did this for a research project looking at BBC News and used the Freedom of Information Act to quantify this phenomenon. My research found that during 2000 and 2010, the number of BAME senior leaders in BBC News peaked in 2006 at six, but the median was two during this decade. If I had continued my research, I am in little doubt that I would have found, despite the spin from BBC News, a similar and static number of senior leaders in tiers where they are just below the necessary lever of power. I will explain what I mean by “levers of power” later in this submission. 9. How can we describe structural, systemic and institutional racism in an immediately understandable and pictorial way? The Labour MP, Dawn Butler, described it aptly during an Eastern Eye virtual roundtable during the pandemic. Take two people, one BAME and one-non-BAME and ask them to run 100 metres. What you do not tell the BAME athlete is that they will be running 100 metres with hurdles, while their white competitor will be racing towards the finish line in the 100 metres sprint. These “hurdles” are what rules out equality of fair play, equality of endeavour and eventually equality of progress. No matter how hard the BAME athlete tries, they will never be able to compete fairly with their white colleague. 10. It is this idea of “fairness”, a quintessentially British concept, that this committee should, I humbly suggest, focus some of its attention. It is fairness, rather than diversity, which may prick the consciousness of those with their hands on the levers of power, those who can effect real change. As naive as this may sound, are we being fair to all, is the real question. 11. We use the term “unconscious bias”. But that really is a cop out. It is allowing racism to be palatable and acceptable. It is an excuse. The way we are moulded, our experiences of others and how we choose to let these affect our decision- making process, is in our control, not in anyone else’s. [Tate & Page (2018) Whiteliness and institutional racism: hiding behind (un)conscious bias] 12. Unconscious bias also does not explain why BAME recruiters are more likely to choose white candidates over people of colour. It also does not explain why so few BAMEs end up in CEO roles either in the NHS or FTSE 100. [Kline, R. (2014) The “snowy white peaks” of the NHS: a survey of discrimination in governance and leadership and the potential impact on patient care in London and England. Parker J. (2020) Ethnic Diversity Enriching Business Leadership 2 An update report from The Parker Review.] 13. I humbly suggest that the committee calls it as we, people of colour, see it – racism embedded in our very structure, system and institution. To abrogate responsibility for fear of upsetting journalists would, in my view, be a wasted opportunity. The police went through this painful recognition 20-plus years ago, and it is still learning, as journalism must. This is your moment to do the right thing, and your moment to give a voice to those who are afraid to speak out. 14. It may interest the committee to know that I am, at this moment, in a tussle with BBC News over how it describes the racial identity of Senator Kamala Harris, running for the vice presidency of the United States of America. Her mother was Indian, and her father is a British Jamaican. Can we really describe her as solely black, which is what BBC News has been doing, or should we respect the fact she embraces and espouses her Indian roots, as she did in her acceptance speech? Diversity is necessary for nuanced conversations, but it goes wider than that. 15. This may be a small example, but if it were taken in context with the U-turn on the use of the “N” word and reprimanding the presenter Naga Munchetty, and you begin to grasp the lack of understanding by white editors to the sensitivity of language. We desperately need journalism to be “future- proofed” to avoid the same errors over and over again. 16. How does this affect the future of journalism? I have sent previously to the committee three chapters I have written which shows the impact of the lack of racial diversity in newsrooms, and I ask the committee reads these as part of my submission. I precis these below. Section 3: Lack of racial diversity and the impact on the current and future journalism 17. In big set events, such as the past two general elections, the main UK broadcasters admitted that they, on the whole, did not cater for black or Asian audiences in their flagship programmes. If we take the 2011 Census, which is almost a decade out of date, 14 per cent of people in the UK described themselves as non-white. 18. If we use that 14 per cent as the modest benchmark of the time which should be allocated to “ethnic issues”, then we have quantifiably shown the lack of racial or ethnic diversity in the coverage or thinking behind the news agenda in 21st century Britain. 19. Indeed, we do not need to concentrate solely on “big events”.